Two weeks ago, I suggested that the coffee business is broken and that we need to take extraordinary measures to fix it: create alternative pricing mechanisms, build a permanent institution to foster cross-sector collaboration and send explorers to the frontiers of coffee to search for new insights. We have our work cut out for us, […]
The first day of the First International Coffee Rust Summit is in the books. My plans to Tweet from the event were foiled by connectivity problems. Will try again on day two. Meantime, here are some of the quotes and notes that stood out for me from the first full day of proceedings.
During last year’s SCAA Symposium, Liam Brody of Root Capital urged participants to be “pathologically collaborative” in addressing the ills that continue to ail specialty coffee. Peter Giuliano suggested soon afterward that Liam had “blown up the Twitterverse” with the memorable call to cooperation. But the full echo of that call may only be sounding […]
A noted coffee breeder at the French research institute CIRAD has suggested that the coffee leaf rust emergency in Central America is the result of a “perfect storm.” Is there a silver lining anywhere in those storm clouds?
One overcast Sunday last September, Nick Cho published this searching reflection on the relationship between coffee quality and social impact. Somehow it managed to escape my notice until this past weekend. Nick’s post is beautiful in its candor, frankly acknowledging the limitations of specialty coffee and honestly exploring “the true human condition of the coffee […]
Over the past two days I have summarized recent contributions to the current debate over the appropriate role for Robusta coffees in the specialty market and provided some context for our promotion of quality-differentiated Robusta. Today, some questions about aspects of the great debate that left me scratching my head.
During this year’s SCAA Symposium and Expo, and the inevitable slate of follow-up calls the week after, the issue of size kept coming up in my conversations. There was the roaster that bemoaned how small it was, wishing it could do more to meet the demands of its partners. There was the roaster that felt […]
The 2012 edition of the SCAA Expo proved that nice guys don’t always finish last — among the event’s big winners were some of the nicest guys in coffee.
As usual, this year’s SCAA was a blur, with great coffee from the country’s best roasters and baristas fueling long days and late nights punctuated by lots of thought-provoking discussions. It always takes me a few weeks to really digest all the discussions from SCAA and understand their implications for my work here in the […]
Counter Culture Coffee Buyer and Sustainability Manager Kim Elena Ionescu was scheduled to present the company’s brilliant case study on the social impact of microlots to the 2012 SCAA Expo today. She was unable to attend, so Counter Culture’s Coffee Director Peter Giuliano stood in for her — arguably one of the more notable understudies […]
